A typical day for us usually involves sitting behind a desk staring at a computer in the basement of the BGS Edinburgh office. As marine geologists we are tasked with mapping the seabed and sub-seabed for government and commercial interests. Fundamental to this is an understanding of how geological processes such as ice, rivers, wind, waves and tides have shaped the seabed over long periods of time. Our field area is inaccessible to us as it is drowned beneath sometimes thousands of metres of water and we rely on remote sensing data such as bathymetry and seismic to image the seafloor and make our interpretations. Once we have “guestimated” geological conditions we need to prove them with physical samples and this is where the BGS Marine Operations team comes in.